The Watermelon Church: Environmental Green and Socialist Red

By Brannon S. Howse

An ever-increasing number of New Religious Right members, neo-evangelical leaders, useful idiots, and their organizations, churches, and denominations are cultivating the “watermelon plan.” The centerpiece of this strategy involves giving credibility to or outright jumping on the bandwagon of radical environmentalism to promote the green movement and its related Communist (red) socialism.  

A few years ago, for example, the International Church of the Nazarene released its “Creation Care” document which declared:

In this most critical moment in Earth’s history, we are convinced that the central moral imperative of our time is the care for Earth as God’s creation. Churches, as communities of God’s people in the world, are called to exist as representatives of the loving Creator, Sustainer, and Restorer of all creation. We are called to worship God with all our being and actions, and to treat creation as sacred. We must engage our political leaders in supporting the very future of this planet. We are called to cling to the true Gospel–for “God so loved the world” (John 3:16).

“The central moral imperative of our time is the care for Earth as God’s creation”? Really? What about the millions of people who die each day and go to hell for eternity? How sad that the central moral imperative of the day for the Church of the Nazarene is not the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

This misappropriation of priorities is not limited to the Church of the Nazarene, though. In May 2011, Lynne Hybels, wife of founding pastor Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Church in Chicago, was appointed to President Obama’s faith counsel. Lynne, who also writes for the magazine and website of Jim Wallis, wants her husband’s church to focus on the imperative of global warming and care for the environment. Concerned about the Hybels’ emphasis on such an agenda, Worldview Weekend speaker and columnist David Noebel wrote an article for worldviewweekend.com entitled, “Pastor Bill Hybels’ Wife and Willow Creek Are Proud of the ‘Social Justice’ of Rev. Jim Wallis.” In it, Noebel quotes one of Lynne Hybels’ blog posts:

I look forward to the day when we as a church will be known for being the greenest church on the planet, not just because we enjoy the beauty of God’s creation, but because we know that climate change is a justice issue.

Lynne’s job title at Willow Creek Church is “Advocate for Global Engagement.” Apparently, she’s more interested in engaging the globe itself than the people who live on it.

David Noebel also reveals that Lynn Hybels’ friend and co-laborer for the advancement of socialism, Jim Wallis, is a “defender of Fidel Castro and a party to the proliferation of Communist revolutions throughout Central America, moving amongst the evangelicals and deceiving them left and left.”

The Hybels have embraced an assortment of radicals. Speakers at their church services and conferences include Bill Clinton, Bono, Tony Blair, Rob Bell, and Brian McLaren, among others. Hybels admits he is a progressive—yet another name for “socialist”—in his endorsement of Jim Wallis’ book The Great Awakening:

Progressive and centrist evangelicals are one stirring away from a real awakening. We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation, in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing world. What Wallis has been talking about is coming to fruition.

Sojourners, the organization run by Jim Wallis, has received funding from George Soros, a graduate of the Fabian Socialist, London School of Economics. In a column at worldviewweekend.com, Noebel explains how Wallis and the Hybels are emerging as the new leaders of the religious left Trojan horse: 

According to Newsweek’s Educational Site, on November 30, 2010, Wallis was among a dozen “moderate” Christian leaders who gathered in Washington to discuss ways to “articulate a vision of Christianity that will counter a new-and newly powerful-religious-right rhetoric in advance of the 2012 election.” In other words, they were plotting ways to make conservative evangelicals think of Obama as one of them. How this pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-socialist president could be “one of them” is difficult to fathom. But Joel Hunter, pastor of the Northland Church in Orlando, and Tony Campolo, sociologist and advisor to former President Clinton, were among the Christian leaders at the meeting. 

Campolo set the tone for the meeting by denouncing the religious right’s “vision of America as God’s own country, and free-market capitalism as crucial to the nation’s flourishing.” He went on to elaborate that what motivates religious conservatives is this distorted vision of God and country and that anyone who disagrees with them “is a socialist or a communist.”

To this group and others of like mind, the “radical right” (i.e., conservative Christians) must be demeaned if not destroyed so the new guard of evangelicals, led by the Rev. Wallis and his loyal sidekicks Bill and Lynne Hybels (Lynne writes for Sojourners magazine) of Willowcreek Church in Chicago, must emerge as the new leaders.

The truth is that Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo have been part of the religious left for years (see Ron Nash’s Why the Left Is Not Right), and Wallis has been swimming in Marxist waters ever since his college days at Michigan State University when he was involved with Students for a Democratic Society.  

Wallis recently showed his dialectical morality when challenged by Marvin Olasky, editor of World magazine. When Olasky asked Wallis to finally admit he was “a man of the left,” Wallis insisted he was a man of the center. When Olasky insisted that men of the center don’t take financial help from the radical leftist George Soros and his Open Society Institute, Wallis insisted his organization (Sojourners) never took funds from Soros. When Olasky produced evidence that Sojourners has taken tens of thousands of dollars from Soros, Wallis finally had to say “uncle.” Indeed, Wallis actually apologized to Olasky for calling him “a liar” (see World magazine, August 18, 2010.)

Noebel thinks the Hybels and their neo-evangelical friends should put their money where their mouth is and go live in the socialist “heaven” of Cuba or Venezuela: 

The progressive evangelicals who are helping to bring about this descent into a socialistic hell need to live in Cuba or Venezuela for a year before they entice any more naïve evangelicals into such a quagmire of hopelessness and despair.

In a February 13, 2006  article at worldviewweekend.com, I explained about these progressive “evangelical” leaders that: 

During a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, organized by the Evangelical Environmental Network, a newly formed coalition called the Evangelical Climate Initiative, released a statement signed by more than 85 “evangelical” leaders. 

Some of the global warming gadflies that signed the Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action include Jim Wallis, Founder and Editor of Sojourners magazine, Rick Warren, author of Purpose Driven Life and pastor at Saddleback Church; Senior Pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, MN and former [now president again at the time I am writing this book in Fall 2011] National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) president Leith Anderson; World Vision president Rich Stearns; Salvation Army national commander Todd Bassett; Christianity Today editor David Neff and executive editor Timothy George; and Wheaton College president Duane Litfin, Rob Bell of Mars Hill, Bill Hybels of Willow Creek, Dan Kimball, Vintage Faith Church, Brian McLaren, Emergent Church leader, Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, Joel Hunter, Northland Church and former president elect of the Christian Coalition, Richard Stearns, President of World Vision. 

It is bad enough that so many “evangelical” environmental extremists have infected our churches, colleges, universities and evangelicalism with their liberal brand of Christianity, but now they want to damage America’s free enterprise system by making it difficult for business to compete in the world marketplace?  

According to the New York Times, the group’s efforts are being funded by such liberal organizations as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Hewlett Foundation. The Rockefeller Brother’s Fund has given grants to such radical environmental groups as Greenpeace. Let’s not forget that it was the Rockefellers that donated the land and formed the United Nations. 

According to a press release by the pro-life group Human Life International, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund supports many anti-Christian ideals and organizations including the United Nation’s Millennium Peace Summit: 

The United Nations Millennium Peace Summit called for organized religions to support the United Nations’ world peace aims. Among the items for consideration is the Charter for Global Democracy, which has been described as the new “Ten Commandments” for the world. The summit is a project of the United Religions Initiative (URI), along with other groups. The URI favors abortion, sex education, same-sex marriage, and population control. The event is being funded, among other private entities, by the United Nations Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. 

According to the website of lifesite.net, in 2001, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation approved a grant of $600,000 to International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) to provide “sexual and reproductive health services to adolescents in Brazil, Ecuador and Peru.”

Behold my friends, the discernment, brain-trust and leadership behind some of today’s leading churches, colleges, Christian publications and Christian organizations.

This is an emerging brand of Christianity that is assisting in and giving credibility and cover to groups in favor of globalism, the end of national sovereignty, tyranny and eventually the persecution of Christians. Let’s face it; the environmental initiative of many of today’s popular Christian leaders is being funded by some of the most anti-Christian, anti-American, globalist organizations. Follow the money trail. 

The group of 85 is nothing less than the secular left’s Trojan horse that has been placed inside evangelical circles. The question is, does the group of 85 know they are being used? If so, what does that say about the group of 85? If they don't know they are being used what does that tell you about their discernment? Can you really follow any of these “evangelical” leaders that are either complicit or ignorant in their involvement with such anti-Christian, globalist organizations?

As far back as February 2006, I warned about the religious Trojan horse that had infiltrated evangelicalism. Remember that Rick Warren and Leith Anderson also signed onto the “Yale document,” which declares that Christians and Muslims worship the “one God.” Do you see the pattern here? NAE board member and “Third Way” proponent Pastor Joel Hunter also signed the Evangelical Climate Initiative.

As religious leaders become more political and political leaders become more religious, they facilitate the creation of the woman riding the beast—the harlot church. I predict you will soon be shocked to see individuals you never thought would betray the Jesus Christ falling in with this unholy alliance. 

Copyright 2012 ©Brannon Howse. This content is for Situation Room members and is not to be duplicated in any form or uploaded to other websites without the express written permission of Brannon Howse or his legally authorized representative.